Within a Budding Grove

But who, the reader has been asking…

Incidentally she could naturally…

Finally, if I went to hear Berma…

For my judgment was aware…

But suddenly everything was altered.

And I gazed appealingly…

As I entered, the Ambassador rose…

You would have supposed, to hear him…

My interest in Berma's acting…

'Your friend M. de Vaugoubert…'

'One thing, however,' M. de Norpois concluded…

Poor Swann, who is as unsophisticated…

Perhaps, on the other hand…

I am aware that this is a blasphemy…

While he was uttering these words…

After M. de Norpois had gone…

Meanwhile my father…

Our visits ended…

Meanwhile Gilberte never came…

This 'marquise' warned me…

I was often obliged, so that my grandmother…

One day, after the postman had called…

Thus at length I found my way…

And she would make us go into the dining room…

At such moments I should…

The Swanns shared this eccentricity…

Mme. Swann had, however…

To return to the reasons…

For these the Bontemps and Cottards…

It was not only in those tea-parties…

As a rule, however…

If I did not understand the sonata…

I expressed an intense desire…

However it may be…

We were standing a little way off…

A favour still more precious…

Meanwhile we had taken our places…

These unintelligible words…

Doubtless again…

An intimate friend would furnish proofs…

I let myself go in telling him…

In Gilberte's eyes…

And yet I ought perhaps…

'I'll tell you who does need a good doctor…'

My mother had not, indeed…

A whole lot more of my aunt…

One was to appear, alas, from a quarter…

Grief that is caused one by a person…

But this resumption of friendly relations…

I was not unhappy…

This kind of existence…

'Aren't we to see anything of your delicious child?'

Swann would accompany his wife to their annual evening…

She relied upon Mme Cottard…

'When the Doctor gets a book in his hands, you know!'

In consequence of the violence…

Unfortunately certain persons…

She used often to say…

One felt that she did not dress simply…

What helped me to remain patient…

Meanwhile there was in me another force…

Pending these posthumous fulfilments…

The reason I now gave in my letters…

But it was still more than I could endure…

On her arrival…

Place-Names: The Place

Unhappily those marvellous places…

For the first time…

My grandmother, however…

Presently there gathered behind…

Certain names of towns…

In the little train of the local railway…

My sense of loneliness…

She was wearing a loose cambric gown…

Imagining that I was…

On the other hand…

And at night they did not dine in the hotel…

And then mere chance put into our hands…

'But you were quite wrong, I assure you,' replied the barrister…

But I was obliged to take my eyes…

In the end we too formed…

Were she to encounter Françoise…

But on that previous morning…

After this I would spend the mornings…

Before getting into the carriage…

Sometimes as the carriage laboured…

It is possible, for I have never in real life met any girls…

And this inner self of the charming…

I watched the trees gradually withdraw…

She found fault with Balzac…

Even in Mme de La Rochefoucauld's…

He was coming from the beach…

Indeed in Saint-Loup…

If I had spent two or three hours…

At his use of the word…

Each of our friends has his defects…

The same day, he contrived to see me alone…

The uncle for whom we were waiting…

He gave me the impression…

I now recognised in the hard look…

I had supposed that in thus inviting…

'On the contrary,' he retorted…

Meanwhile my grandmother…

There was, then, embedded in my friend Bloch…

M. Bloch told Saint-Loup and me that Bergotte knew so well…

As a rule, after bringing out from his store…

She had presently, with respect to Saint-Loup…

It is true that he had succeeded in getting out of her…

Seascape, with Frieze of Girls

Just as if, in the heart of their band…

And yet the supposition that I might some day be the friend…

I could say to myself with conviction…

I asked myself whether the girls I had just seen…

But as often as not they were, indeed, only pictures…

Unfortunately, having on that condition only obtained…

The harmony of these astral tables did not prevent…

Often, since even after dinner there was still a little light…

He had, in fact, before he made the acquaintance of…

Last night I had been nothing more than an empty vessel…

Suddenly I thought of the fair girl with the sad expression…

Since those days, so different from the day…

And no doubt at first he had thought…

How many observations, patient but not at all serene…

Most of those that covered the walls…

Although we are justified in saying that there can be…

This vast celestial vision of which he spoke to me…

I asked Elstir whether these girls lived at Balbec…

At the foot of the picture was inscribed…

One feels unmistakably, when one sees side by side…

Night was falling…

What did I know of Albertine?

But apart from this, had the portrait been not anterior…

He chose therefore, rather than say anything…

I was afraid that this tone, this way of inviting a person…

When I arrived at Elstir's a few minutes later…

Moreover, if there had disappeared, provisionally at any rate…

We formed that morning one of those couples…

Having sacrificed this first moment to a custom…

'Oh, so you know the little d'Ambresacs, do you?'

At once kindled by her flame…

Within the next few days…

When the time came for her to go off to a luncheon party…

In the old days I should have preferred…

So that if before these visits to Elstir…

Some days we took our refreshment…

For the sense of boredom which it is impossible not to feel…

All this I realised, and yet we talked so little.

But in the days that followed…

When there is added to this the agitation aroused…

I was looking at Albertine, so pretty…

Shewing herself always tenderly indulgent…

Nor was it any longer the room…

I tried to induce Elstir…

'She's not written only to your father, either…'

I had supposed that the love which I felt for Albertine…

If this sort of select popularity…

Taking first of all the supposition that she was…

The misunderstanding, due to an initial mistake…

So it was with Albertine as with her friends.

No matter which it might be of my friends…

Sometimes, however, the driving rain…